sans ailes
by foryoualullaby
Summary: In which Arthur is an angel fallen, and Francis is the reason why.


hello, hello! it really doesn't bear mentioning that it has been a _while_ since last i've so much as visited this site, and I'm deeply sorry for that. between losing my ipod and finding Tumblr, I've been distracted and unable to write ;3; as for the status of my other two fics, i'm not at all certain. if i can work up the motivation, I'll continue them, but at present I… really don't know. hopefully, at least for now, this will make up for my absence? ;;;;

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><p><strong>[<strong>_francis is wicked, and Arthur can't help but be endeared._**]**

Arthur flies too low to the ground. He knows better, he knows he ought to stay away from below, where humans sin and destroy what they built, but they tempt him in a strange sort of way. Their movements are clumsy, poorly coordinated, so very ungraceful, and they talk far too loud. Their eyes are frightening, he can't read them, they are so very _childish_, all of them, and they are so, so very breakable. He ought to pity them, as the others do, there should be a measure of disdain that he feels when he looks upon them.

But to the contrary, he _admires_ them.

For how easy they must have it: one is born, one lives, one loves, one dies. It's a simple life. And there is a part of him, small, traitorous, insidious, that wants that for himself. For all their imperfections they are beautiful, humans are, because they have things that he doesn't. Like love. And Arthur has been known to want what he can't have. As it turns out, it is very possible for one to fall in love if one flies low enough. He grows to love that terrible, dirty world with their terrible, destructive people.

And then there is Francis.

He likes to garden, Arthur finds upon watching. That's how he meets him, in fact, and where: in his garden, humming to himself a song that is _familiar_, somehow, something he might have heard long, long ago. He doesn't quite mistake him for an angel — Francis isn't particularly angelic, far from it, in fact, he is quite the opposite and if anything Arthur might say he is damned. Except there is no hell, none that he knows of, so who knows where Francis will go? But there's something about the way he moves, the way his eyes flicker, long lashes over uncharacteristically fair skin, and it draws Arthur in.

Francis is not good. He's one of the worse humans, Arthur thinks. He feels strange, something isn't quite right about him. He is wicked; he teases, his snarls are whispers, he can be so very cruel and he is everything that angels hate about humans (for one should never hate, but the angels do because they are _above_ us humans). He is arrogant, prideful, greedy and selfish. He is wicked, but quietly wicked, and Arthur doesn't like him. Except he does.

They finally talk on a summer day, middle of a heat wave, the sort of day where people do things they_shouldn't_ because they _can_. Perhaps that is what tempts Arthur, initially.

Or perhaps it's just Francis.

Arthur lands in a rosebush, grumbling about the way thorns cling to his robe. And Francis laughs, doesn't even react to the fact that there is an angel in his garden. Or, he does: Arthur sees a glint of something in his eyes, something not entirely friendly.

The conversation goes like this: Francis tells him that it's rude to just land in someone's garden; Arthur says he doesn't particularly care because he is an angel, and isn't one supposed to be kind to angels. Francis grins and Arthur can't help but smile back.

"What is your name?"

"I'm Francis." He waits for the angel to give him his name, but he never does.

And that's it, their first conversation. The beginning of Arthur's fall is a conversation among roses and irises.

**[**_on angels, and those who were_.**]**

Francis isn't very surprised to find that Arthur has fallen. For he was a good angel, and he tried, he really did, but he was too curious, and there was something in his eyes reminiscent of fire, green fire, and the fires of the mortal world do not belong so far above. And perhaps Francis has aided in his fall; while Arthur had tried to avoid him, one always finds oneself returning to the thing which burns the most. Francis burns like a star.

The middle of a city, smoke and ashes and feet and gutters, is hardly the place for an angel to fall. But that's where he finds him, in an alley, curled up in on himself like origami, and he joins him there on the floor covered in newspapers, the remnants of a normal life. He pulls him up into his lap, fragile, so fragile (_skin of paper, bones of glass, gossamer wings and fire eyes_), presses his lips to his ear and asks him, "What are you now, Arthur?" and Arthur says "Nothing" but he doesn't really say anything.

Francis is a child, in his mind, and it is with the innocent cruelty of a child that he takes one of Arthur's wings in his hand and plucks a feather off. It crumbles in his hands, disintegrates, dissipates into dust that scatters itself over his jeans. Arthur whimpers, arches, twists away and Francis can see the red on his back and the pulse beneath porcelain skin.

"Your wings are falling off, angel."

His halo lies somewhere in the back, in a corner, glowing faintly, flicker-faltering before going _out_ and enclosing them in silent darkness.

The sounds of the city are all about them, _rush, rush, flicker, screeching,_and Arthur covers his ears, pushes Francis away even as Francis draws him closer. His wings make a sort of noise against the ground like paper dragging across a desk, for his wings are made of paper now, that Arthur sees. The wings were never real. His halo is dust. His wings are dust. Soon he'll be dust.

He doesn't belong here.

Francis has never wanted anything quite so much. Arthur, prone and weak, dying but not really, creates in Francis a hollow somewhere in his stomach that he aches to fill now. But he doesn't, because Arthur is an angel.

He doesn't.

Instead he lifts Arthur, rises slowly to his feet. His wings sweep down in one arch until they hang limply beneath him, hang by a thread and refuse to _let go_ because Arthur is an angel

he is an angel

he is an angel

he won't let go

he is an angel

and he is slipping.

And Francis carries him off.

**[**_arthur is homesick._**]**

Arthur is fading fast. Somewhere between "ashes" and "dust," his wings going first. There are two lines running parallel down his back, and Francis traces them at night as Arthur whimpers and sighs, drifting in and out of dreams of dark heavens. He imagines there are stories in there, little flashes of clouds and light that he might never get to see, and he wishes he could look inside. Now the lines are healing over, Arthur's wings have disintegrated. Arthur's wings are dust scattered across Francis's doorstep, little glitters that refract the sunlight at noon like fairy dust except Francis stopped believing in fairy tales around the same time he stopped believing in angels. Maybe it's time he starts believing again.

In the mornings Francis is the first to wake. He gives Arthur breakfast in bed, because Arthur is an angel and Arthur is sick and Arthur deserves to be pampered. What else can he do? "I'm sorry I brought you down here with me" isn't a terribly decent apology, and at this point they're both beyond petty words and somewhere around maybe "friends." Even then it's hard to call them that, for Arthur will always resent Francis and Francis will always regret Arthur. Perhaps if they had both been humans there might be something between them. But between them now is just warm bread with honey and bitter tea the way Arthur takes it, and a fresh daisy in a cup of water. Not good enough for Francis; but then again, not much is good enough for Francis in the first place.

The fact of the matter is that Arthur can't last much longer here. He is wasting away, thriving in body but dying in mind. This world is far too dirty for him, far too full of sin that isn't quite sin if you're human. But it's alright, because there's something about the human world that makes him happy he's there. Not that he can do much with this knowledge now — it's a long way up, and he's never going back. It's a bit like an experiment, his time down here, albeit a permanent one and one which cannot be learnt from.

(When Francis sleeps — on his stomach, arms folded under his head like a pillow, head turned to the side and lashes fluttering in dreams — Arthur traces and counts the bumps on his spine, the rise of the bones on his shoulders, runs his finger down the slope till Francis mumbles in his sleep and threatens to wake. Between the slants of light across Francis's neck Arthur imagines he finds home. He finds starlight in the hollow of his neck, the sun in his eyes. All while he sleeps, while he cannot be cruel, for in sleep all humans are innocent things.)


End file.
